


Misfits

by nevermindgrantaire



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Community Service, Death but not of major characters, F/F, Misfits AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 01:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4081729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermindgrantaire/pseuds/nevermindgrantaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Misfits AU that literally no one except me has been waiting for.<br/>Enjolras got herself into trouble; a lot of trouble. Now she's wound up doing community service, with a bunch of pretty cool people and it would be absolutely fine except for the fact that cetain members of the group have made it their mission to literally drive her to distraction.<br/>Oh and also the bit where they all got struck by lightning, developed magical powers and then Cosette accidentally killed their probation worker and several other people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misfits

The Community Centre is almost poetic in its blatant ugliness. The concrete floor makes people’s feet tap loudly, inelegantly, when they walk. Around the court yard, the floor is littered with crisp packets and chocolate wrappers and chewing gum and drinks cans. In a corner is a thin, weedy tree reaching desperately up towards the weak sunlight in a bid to escape. Looking at it, she wishes she could do the same, although it’s likely she’d be just as successful. Spewed across the walls is graffiti, red and green and pink and gold and royal blue and sunshine yellow words all tumbling over one another to be seen.

In the middle of the courtyard are her new “team mates”. Slouching resplendent in their orange jumpsuits with “Community Payback Scheme” emblazoned on the back, the five teenagers in front of her look less than enthusiastic. One, a tall girl with a black beanie hat pulled on over riotous curly hair and a green vest top, the sleeves of her jumpsuit tied around her waist, is blowing bubbles with her gum and chewing loudly. Obnoxious.

Beside her is another girl, this one looking much less confident. Her hair is long, brown with purple streaks. Her lower lip is bloody from biting it so often. She’s wearing too much mascara and her eyes look like small spiders. Beside her, a short, skinny boy with freckled collarbones and heavily tanned skin, blinking in the sunlight. His ginger eyelashes look like they’re on fire when the light catches them. Then there’s another guy beside him, Asian probably, with dark hair and big dark eyes that make him look about twelve. Enjolras joins the row next to the last person, a girl with glossy dark skin and cheek bones sharp enough to kill, slumping her shoulders forward and trying not to be noticed.

The girl on the other end seems finished with her gum, and she spits it out to the side onto the tarmac. Beside her, purple hair girl grimaces, and beanie girl sees. “Oh, what? It’s just a bit of gum and drool! Never hurt anyone.” She seems to be constantly fidgeting, and spins around on her heel, wandering away from the line a little. “God, you’re all a bundle of laughs, aren’t you?”

Twelve-year-old speaks up. “We’re not exactly here for fun, dude.”

“Well, we’ll make it fun!” Beanie girl throws her arms in the air, gesturing around herself. “This is going to be the least shit community service yet!”

“You’ve done this before?” Enjolras finds herself asking, and then curses herself for drawing attention.

“Only about a billion times.” She shrugs, a ‘what-can-you-do-?’ grin on her face. “Cops in this town just can’t take a joke.” There is a silence for a moment. “So, what did you do, blondie?”

Enjolras doesn’t answer, eyes on the floor.

“Oh, come on. We’re gonna be spending the next 200 hours cleaning crap off the leisure centre walls together, we might as well try and gather up a certain level of intimacy. I’ll tell you anything!” She’s wandered off into the corner, playing keepie-up with a can. “Like, celebrity shag would definitely be Meryl Streep.”

“She’s like 60.” Interjects Twelve-year-old.                                                      

“Sure, but she could still get it!” She kicks the can up hard, and then sideways, towards the centre’s office window, but it knocks against it and clatters away. “And Helen Mirren too. Pierce Brosnan, maybe. Oh, I know! What’s that lady from the film with the aliens?”

“God, enough already!” Cheekbones groans, and rolls her eyes. “Don’t need a list of everyone you’d fuck, for real.”

“No, no, that’s fair enough.” Beanie girl grins and her front teeth are gappy. “I will refrain from divulging my sexual fantasies. At least until I get bored enough later on. I give it about an hour once we start and you’ll be begging to know what me and Helen would get up to.” Her eyebrows wiggle, and then her attention snaps back to Enjolras. “So anyway. Blondie. You don’t look like a common criminal.”

“What, and the rest of us do?” Ginger pipes up.

“Well. No offence but you definitely do,” Beanie girl snorts, and jumps neatly out of the way as Ginger kicks a manky old coke can at her. “Nice shot though!”

“How do I look like a criminal?” Twelve says. “I look like a 10 year old.”

Beanie girl’s eyes widen and she grins. “I was just thinking that!” When Twelve gives her a faintly amused sigh, she winks and gives an elaborate bow. “I aim to please.” She already can’t stand the other girl.

“You’re annoying,” Cheekbones tells her.

“I’m a fucking delight.” She stretches, her bones cracking, and Purple Hair grimaces again. “Oh, come on, that wasn’t even deliberate. I can be a lot more disgusting than that if you want me to.”

“Please don’t!” Beanie grins, and flexes her fingers, and then pops her knuckles one by one. Purple Hair squeaks. “That’s gross!”

Seemingly bored of antagonising the rest of the group, Beanie girl sidles up to her and slings an arm around her shoulder. “So anyway. Blondie.”

“My name is Enjolras.”

“Bless you. Anyway, Blondie. What on earth did you do to get chucked down on the rubbish heap with the rest of us wasters?”

She shifts uncomfortably, ducking out from under her arm.

“Did you kill someone? You’ve got that whole serial killer intense stare thing going on.”

“Leave it, dude,” Twelve says, and Cheekbones nods. “She obviously doesn’t want to say.”

“Or maybe you robbed a bank. Walked in and stunned them all with your goddess-like looks and then walked out with all the cash.”

“I shouldn’t even be here!” Enjolras spits, crossing her arms and turning her back.

“Well, sure. None of us should be here. We’re all ‘innocent, I swear officer!’ We’re all just ‘holding it for a friend’ and ‘wrong place and wrong time’ and ‘got carried away’ but we all roll up here in the end.”

“I’m not meant to be here.” Enjolras repeats, quieter.

Beanie girl shrugs, getting bored. “Sure.”

“I’m serious!” She paused. “I’m not meant to be here. I didn’t do it.”

“But if I’d done it, how could you tell me that I was wrong?” Beanie girl sang, jumping up and balancing on the edge of the plant pot, before falling off with a dramatic flourish. Blank faces blinked down at her. “Chicago? No? No one?”

Ginger guy sighs, worriedly biting his nails.

“Chill out, would you? This is going to be a piece of cake! The fucking probation twat hasn’t even showed up yet, this is easy as fuck!”

From behind them, someone cleared their throat and they heard the clack clack clack of shiny black leather shoes on the concrete. “The ‘fucking probation twat’, as you put it, is here. Hello.” He gives a little sarky wave. He’s tall and skinny with plastered back salt and pepper hair and as pencil moustace. His badge reads “D. Javert”.

“Oh shit,” Beanie girl says, eyes going wide, and turns round. “Oh fuck it, you again.”

“Hello, Grantaire,” The probation officer says, a sickly sweet smile on his face and the look of a man who would happily jump off a bridge given the chance in his eyes. “How long has it been since last time?”

She shrugs, rummaging through her pocket for more gum. “I dunno, a month?”

He sighs tiredly. “That’s probably a record.”

Grantaire grins toothily, proud of herself, and picks up a bucket from the stack by the door. “Ahh, it’s good to be back.”

 

***

 

Over the course of the day, Enjolras learns that Cheekbones is actually called Combeferre, that she’s 19 (same as her) and that she got arrested after trying to protect one of her friends during a drugs bust. “It’s like, she’s had charges for possession before and I didn’t want her going down for real, so I took the blame. And I thought they’d go easy on me for a first time offence, but… yeah.”

The girl with purple hair, Cosette, had gotten in trouble for punching a guy who was harassing her on the bus the first time, and then for breaking curfew the second time even though she seemed the sweetest, best behaved person on earth.

Twelve, or Joly, was actually older than most of them, same age as Grantaire- 21. He’d gotten himself into trouble protecting his boyfriend, he said. Apparently his boyfriend was painfully clumsy and one night they’d been out and he’d tripped and bumped into a guy, making him spill his drink. The guy flipped out, of course, and Joly had leapt to his defence, despite being 5 foot tall in his socks and about as weedy. Of course, he’d been beaten to a pulp and then arrested for public disorder. Apparently he was training to be a nurse but he’d taken a year out because of un-named illness. Once he’s relaxed, he actually gets on pretty well with Grantaire- giggles despairingly at her bad jokes and shakes his head quietly with a smirk when she goes too far.

The ginger guy, Feuilly, is in Grantaire’s words, a “weedy little shit” with a habit of zoning out if he stands still too long and actual orange-sized muscles whenever he flexes his tiny little arms. She seems to like him too, although this liking takes the form of gentle bullying. He’s 20, a stick of a boy with more freckles on his face than skin. He doesn’t talk much, and when he does, he stutters. He’s in for something to do with drugs as well although he maintains it was an accident and it’s hard to not believe him. Enjolras likes him, finds him constantly interesting. She catches Grantaire making mocking hero-worship eyes at him, pretending to be her. She also catches Joly and Cossette trying to hide their smiles, and decides to just accept it with good grace.

The one member of their merry band of misfits as Joly has dubbed them that she can’t quite work out is Grantaire. She’s painting benches with the rest of them, dropping snarky comments into the conversation and generally being irritating, except that she seems somehow separate- while the others all divulge information readily, Grantaire prefers to wind people up and take the piss.

“So, what exactly did you do?” Enjolras asks her when they have their break, watching her as she stretches her arms around the vending machine in the break room and shakes it. “And what the fuck are you doing now?” She never used to swear that much. It must be the company. Her mother will be delighted.

“It’s broken. If you shake it in just the right way, free food falls out.” She has to shout a little over the sound of it rocking back and forth. Eventually, there is a little “plop” noise and she stops shaking, reaches inside and pulls out a can of coke. “Lovely!”

“Anyway.”

“You wanted to ask something, Blondie?”

“What are you here for?”

“The wonderful company, naturally.”

“Be serious.”

“I’m wild!” She pops open the can, and it explodes in a fountain of sugar-scented foam. “Oh, fuck!”

“Aw, great.” Enjolras looks down at her soda-splattered jump suit, and huffs.

Grantaire looks down at her own top, blobs of coke staining it, and shrugs. “You really want to know why I’m here?”

“Um. Yes?”

“Come here, then.” She whispers, and waves her closer. Enjolras frowns, but does. “Closer. Closer.” Her lips are right against Enjolras’ ear, her breath stirring her hair slightly. She shifts nervously, wanting to hear. “You ready to hear this?”

“Just tell me already!”

“I am… This is a big secret, ok? You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“Ok.” She lowers her voice even more dramatically. “I am…” Enjolras waits, eyes wide out of concern for Grantaire and out of tension. Grantaire grins and raises her voice. “I am an almighty fuck up.”

Enjolras pulls away, rolling her eyes. “Fuck you, I don’t want to know anyway.”

“Ok, ok! Chill. I’ll tell you.” She takes a deep breath. “I stole a rabbit.”

“You what?”

“And not like, one of those sex toy rabbits either. I mean like a literal giant rabbit. Flopsy. Fucking massive thing. One of those ones with the floofy fur.”

“You stole a rabbit.”

“Saw it in a pet shop. Liked it. Drove off with it on the back of my moped.”

Enjolras narrowed her eyes. “Hmmm.”

“God’s honest truth. I swear it.”

“Hmmm.”

 

***

 

Later on, she’s moodily scraping the graffiti off the side of the community centre with Combeferre beside her on one side and Cosette on the other. At the other end of the wall, she can see Grantaire trying to see how many bits of litter she can put on Joly’s head with the litter-picker stick without him noticing.

She glances over at Combeferre, pulling a face. “Do you know what she’s in for? She told me she stole a rabbit but it sounded like bullshit.”

Combeferre frowns in response. “She told me she got caught nicking 12 litres of apple juice from the Co-op.”

On her other side, Feuilly looks up. “Really? She told me that she got arrested for starting a food fight in Pizza Express.”

Cosette laughs at that. “She told me that she got off with a girl on the back of the route 57 bus. Public indecency.”

“Oh, that’s definitely bullshit.”

Enjolras huffs. “She’s just a twat.”

“I don’t know, I quite like her.” Combeferre smiles a little. “She’s funny.”

“She’s annoying.”

“Who’s funny yet annoying?” Grantaire says, popping up behind her like a lanky meerkat.

“You.” Enjolras says stroppily, and stalks off, dropping the paint-scraper thing behind her.

Grantaire watches her go, a shit-eating grin seeping on to her face. “She likes me.”

“What?” Combeferre snorts. “No offence mate, but not likely.”

“Trust me, I know women. I am one, after all. She definitely likes me.”

“Pretty sure that was not the reaction of someone who’s head over heels.”

Grantaire shakes her head, grinning. “She will be. Believe me. She will be.”

 

****

It carries on like this until the storm hits. Friendly teasing, a little awkwardness, long silences and Grantaire stumbling through it all taking the piss.

When the storm hits, they’re on their lunch break- Grantaire sprawled out on a bench, taking up the whole length with her spidery legs. She’s eating crisps nicked from the vending machine, throwing Cheetos and catching them in her mouth.

Enjolras is sat on the opposing bench, her packed lunch on her knees. Feuilly is beside her, drinking coffee from a paper cup and Combeferre is sitting on the railings nearby. Cosette too has a packed lunch- neat cut sandwiches and a slice of cake. There’s a little note in there too and it makes her smile.

“Fucking hell, have you seen the sky?” Combeferre is looking up, her arms tense on the rail.

The sky is boiling- dark rumbling clouds floating over the city. It’s like cotton wool buds that have been dunked into black paint, dripping down little watery bullets of darkness.

It starts to rain, hard.

Grantaire yelps and sits up, throwing her hands over her hair and shielding her face.

“Jesus,” Cosette looks up too and bites her lip, hunching down into her hideous orange jumpsuit. “We should get under cover.” Behind them, Javert is checking his phone happily under the shelter of the entrance to the centre, but that makes him look up.

“Oh no you don’t. I don’t care what the weather’s like- you are going to go through with your full service.”

Feuilly shakes his head, water going flying, nervous. “Look at the lightning. It’s an electrical storm.”

Javert sighs, zipping up his rain coat and checking his watch. “You’ve got 5 minutes left for your break, then back to work.”

The rain shifts to hail, little peppery pea-sized blobs, but then they start getting bigger and bigger and they’re tumbling down faster so that they almost white out all of their vision. Beside them, there’s a sudden crash as a huge hail-stone falls out of the sky and smashes into the ground beside them- Grantaire leaps up. “Holy fuck!”

“Did you see that? That was massive!”

“Shit, that could have killed you!”

“Oh, my god.”

“Shit,” Javert says under his breath, and then out loud, “Ok, come on! Let’s go, back into the centre until this is all over!” They start to run, Javert struggling to open the door in the haze of ice but it’s locked and he can’t work it open. “Round the back! Go round to the back entrance!”

Another hailstone, the size of a small armchair, shatters in front of them, and then another one on the road beside them. From somewhere, there’s the sound of a car alarm.

“Shit, that’s my car!” Javert shouts.

From somewhere behind her, Enjolras can hear Grantaire laugh. “Haha, classic!”

Then there’s another crash, too close to her for comfort and she hurtles round the side of the building and smacks her hands into the fire exit, pounding on the door. It doesn’t budge, and Javert pushes through to unlock it, his frozen icy fingers slipping on the metal and the key slipping out of his fingers.

“Open the door, oh my god!”

“Fucking hell!”

The door opens, and time slows down in Enjolras’ head.

One moment she’s panicking and rushing to the door and the next, the hail around them seems to be falling much slower than it was before and everyone is moving slower too. Feuilly catches Cosette’s hand, pulling her towards the door as she teeters in her little pumps. Combeferre is almost inside but turns round to check that everyone else is ok. Grantaire is behind her, eyes turned upwards as she runs.

It’s that moment that the lightning strikes.

 

***

 

The shock knocks them all to the ground, a little smoke in the air and a little dazed. From the door, Javert’s eyes widen. “Is everyone ok?”

Grantaire is the first to sit up. “Oh, sure, I’m totally fine. Yup, absolutely wonderful. Except that I just got struck by fucking lightning!”

“You ought to send us home for the rest of the day for that.” Combeferre adds as she struggles to prop himself up on her elbows.

“Yeah!” Joly adds, flexing his fingers. “We could have died!”

“Blondie?” Grantaire leans across and pokes her with a finger. “Oi! Blondie?”

Enjolras groans, her head rolling to one side.

“Fuck, she’s not dead is she?”

Grantaire shakes her head, leaning over her. “She’s too pretty to die.” She puts her lips to Enjolras’ ear and shouts. “Oi, Blondie! You’re missing a protest, wake up!”

“Wha-” Enjolras’ eyes snap open. The first thing she does is glare at Grantaire. Then she blinks. “What the fuck just happened?”

“We got struck by lightning,” Cosette says, passing a hand over Grantaire’s hair and laughing at the way that the curls move with the static.

“Ok!” Javert calls from the front, and then twitches as a current of lightning runs through his body. “Everyone alive?”

Joly scowls. “Pretty much.”

“It’s stopped hailing, look!” The aftermath of the storm has fucked up most of the litterpicking that they’ve been doing all morning. The bins are knocked over, the nearby row of cars half trashed. Litter is spewed all out over the path, studded with huge chunks of ice.

“Oh, for god’s sake.”

“Well.” Javert clears his throat. “I guess you lot should be getting back to work, then.”

Cue groans and sighs from the kids, all of them sending him dagger glares as they stand up. Grantaire’s knees feel weak, her head light.

When she flexes her fingers, its almost like she can feel little tendrils of electricity moving underneath her skin.

 

****

 

Later, they’re all finished cleaning off their tools, slouching and fishing phones out of pockets as they file back into the centre. It’s unfortunate for Cosette that she happens to be on the end of the line, because she’s the only one that Javert sees and he pounces on her like a kitten on a mouse. “No phones during work hours.”

Cosette glares. “That’s not fair, I only took it out to check the time.”

Javert raises a thin eyebrow at her as the door closes behind the others. “Sure you did. Hand it over- you can have it back tomorrow.”

“No! You can’t do that, I need my phone.”

He stares her out for a moment, and then reaches out suddenly for it- she tries to pull away but he’s holding on to the phone for dear life, trying to prise her fingers away from it.

“Get off me, you’re hurting me!”

“Give me the fucking phone!” He hisses, and all of a sudden she feels a pulse in her head, like a current just ran through her body. She can feel the shape of something in her mind, a red seething mass of anger and impatience and when she looks at him again his eyes are completely whited out.

“What the fuck.”

She manages to pull away completely, yanking her arm away but losing her phone, and he… He looks different. His face is twitching, his teeth bared.

“What the actual fuck.”

Suddenly he lunges towards her and she darts back with a scream, turning to run away- the door to the community centre is just within reach and she makes a run for it, slamming the door behind her hard and pulling it locked behind her, turning breathless to look into the slightly surprised, mostly confused faces of the others.

They’re all waiting for the changing grooms to be opened, Grantaire sprawled out on the floor and Joly sitting on the single broken chair in the corridor. In the moment of confused silence, Grantaire’s chewing gum bubble pops.

Joly asks "Are you ok?" as she tried to get her breath back.

“The probation worker guy, he’s gone all scary!” She pants. “His eyes went white and he attacked me!”

Feuilly leans forward from the wall, eyes bugging. “What the hell, are you serious?”

Grantaire scoffs. “You’re probably just overreacting, cos you’re a delicate flower who’s never been told off in her life. Shouted at you a bit, did he?”

Cosette whirls round to glare at her. “I’m not stupid. There was something wrong with him, I swear.”

Grantaire sniffs, disbelievingly, and takes a step towards the door.

“Don’t!”

Enjolras sighs, and shoots Grantaire a look. “Stop winding her up, R, she’s obviously upset.”

“Oh, progressing to nicknames, are we? That’s cute.”

“Shut up,” Enjolras growls, turning to Cosette. “Now, how about you come through to the kitchen and I’ll make you a cup of tea. You can tell me all about it.”

Cosette shakes her head, eyes wide and panicked. “He’s gone beserk. I don’t know how, I could feel it. He was so angry, so intense.”

“What do you mean you could feel it?” Joly asks.

“It was like I could see his anger right in front of me, and it was moving and spiky and I think he wants to kill me.”

“Ok, I think you need to just have a sit down-”

“No, it’s weird, it’s like the storm did something to me, I swear. I can see how people feel.”

“I think most people can see how people feel. By, you know. Looking at them.”

 “No, it’s like I can read your mind.”

“Sure." Grantaire smirks. "Ok, what am I thinking right now?"

Cosette closes her eyes, tries to do it again. She can feel the smooth wide shape of her thoughts, greeny grey apathy. "You don't care and you don't believe me."

The smirk fades off her face a little. "Well, that's bloody obvious! Everyone's thinking that."

"No-"

“This is bullshit, I just want to get changed and go home, I’m going to go find the key,” Grantaire says, and Cosette grabs her shoulder.

“No, no! Don’t open the door.”

Grantaire laughs, shrugs her off and reaches out to the door handle.

In Combeferre’s head, everything seems to slow down.

_The door bursts open and the probation worker is there and he moves so fast that Ferre can hardly process it and she sees him swing a length of metal pole out at Cosette’s head and Grantaire try to grab him and pull him back but it’s too late and-_

It’s like waking up from a dream, and it’s repeating again.

Grantaire laughs, shrugs her off and reaches out to the door handle.

Ferre shouts out. “Wait!”

Grantaire turns. “Oh, no, what? You too?”

“She’s telling the truth.”

“Oh really, do you have a magical power too? Do you turn into a fucking magical pony or something?”

“R, she’s telling the truth. I don’t know- I- I saw it. Everything has happened already but then I went back to here. You went and opened the door and he came in and-” His eyes flick towards Cosette. “He… I didn’t see. I think he hurt you, badly.”

“I don’t know what you’ve all been smoking,” R says and she takes a step back towards the door. “But-”

Suddenly, something smashes into the door, once, twice, and she leaps back, her cocky grin gone and her face drained. “What the fuck?”

"Oh, no," Cosette mouths. "He's trying to get in!"

Grantaire stumbles back, face ashen. "Why the hell did you come back here? Now he's going to kill all of us!"

"I'm fucking sorry, but I wanted to warn you!"

"Everybody calm down," Enjolras held out her hands placatingly, although they shook.

Outside, they could see his shadow shifting and looming.

“We’re going to die,” Joly whimpers.

"Think!" Combeferre groaned. "We can get out of here! Just think."

Feuilly tries to reassure Joly. “We’re not going to die.”

“To be honest,” Grantaire starts, her voice rising in pitch, and Enjolras slaps a hand over her mouth.

"Wait, the back door!" Feuilly suddenly jerked to life. "We can get out that way!"

They ran through the centre, feet skidding on the polished lino floor, into the main room- huge glass windows, a thin balcony that ran all the way around the top. Tables and chairs stacked around the sides.

The fire escape glowed like a door to heaven. Enjolras reached it first, hands thudding helplessly into the glass. She pushed the bar, up and down, and then kicked it hard. "It's fucking locked!"

"That is bloody useless. God, what if there was a fire? We'd be burnt to a crisp."

"Priorities, Grantaire."

"Sorry."

"Ugh, what do we do?" Feuilly groaned, running his hands through his hair.

From the other room, there was the sound of smashing glass and heavy footsteps.

"Shit, shit, shit, I don't want to die!"

Grantaire turned to Cosette. "You're so sure you can do that mind shit, so go on! Save us!"

"You are such a dick."

“Quick, get behind the chairs!” Enjolras and Combeferre darted behind a stack of chairs, Grantaire and Feuilly behind a stack of tables on the other side of the door. Joly seemed frozen in panic in the front of the room, eyes wide with panic. His breathing was ragged, his shoulders shaking. Cosette ducked half behind the curtain, calling to him.

“Joly, quick!”

“Joly, get behind the tables!”

“Joly!”

The door clattered open, and Javert stood there but it wasn’t him any more- he may have been grouchy but now he was murderous. His eyes were white, gaping, and his beard flecked with spit and a little bit of blood. He was breathing hard, trailing a length of pipe behind them. Staring right at Joly, he raised it slightly and smashed it hard into the ground. The tendons on his neck jerked and he rolled his shoulders as he stepped forward, looming.

“Leave him alone! Oi! Brain-dead, over here!” Grantaire called suddenly, darting out from behind the table and towards the door so that Javert (or not-Javert) swung towards him.

Feuilly edged out towards Joly, trying to keep low.

“Yep, over here, leave them alone, pay attention to me,” Grantaire continued.

Joly squeezed his eyes shut in fear, biting down hard on his lip. He could hear Grantaire babbling nervously, then her scream and the clang of the metal pipe. He was paralysed, couldn’t move. There was a shout, Enjolras yelling Cosette’s name and, and a swish, and a sound like a melon being hit with a baseball bat. Then the sound of a sack of potatoes being dropped out of the window. Then silence, just the sound of Cosette beside him, breathing hard.

Grantaire’s voice broke the silence, and he slowly opened his eyes. “Holy fuck.”

Cosette was standing there, panting, her shoulders heaving and the front of her orange jumpsuit splattered with blood. From one of her trembling hands hung a heavy-looking fire extinguisher.

“Is he dead?” Grantaire asks.

“I don’t know!” Cosette’s voice is trembling as she looks down at the slumped body of their probation worker.

“Did you just kill your probation worker? You are totally fucked.”

Enjolras stood up. “We all are- we’re accomplices.”

“Joly, you’re a doctor, right?” Feuilly asks, touching his arm gently.

Grantaire whirls round to look at him. “Yeah, you’re a doctor! Fix him!”

Joly shakes his head. “I’m pre-med. And he’s dead.”

“How can you tell? Aren’t you meant to take his pulse?”

“You see the bit where his head’s caved in and you can sort of see his fucking skull? That’s how I can tell.”

“I’m going to be sick.”

“What do we do?”

Grantaire waves her hands hopelessly. “Check his pulse!”

Exasperation snapping him out of his concern, Joly reaches out to take Javert’s pulse. “See? He’s- Fuck!” A kind of black substance seems to be flowing through Javert’s veins from where Joly’s hand is touching him, and he can feel a pulse again- faint but there. “What the hell?” Suddenly, he lurches forward and reaches out, trying to grab at him, but Joly jerks back and the moment his fingers leave the skin, he drops back again. The back of his head is starting to leak blood over the cheap lino floor.

“What just happened?”

“I think he came back to life,” Cosette says, eyes wide.

“When Joly touched him?”

“Yeah…” She pauses. “Do it again.”

Joly shakes his head, staring at his hands like they were alien- Grantaire grabs his wrist and puts his hand on the man’s lifeless arm for an instant. His hand sharply jerks into life and a second time, Joly snatches his hand away.

“What the hell.”

“Get off me, R!”

“You just bought a dead guy back to life.”

Joly shakes his head. “It was a trick of the light. Or something.”

Cosette bites her lip, her eyes still fixed on the body of the probation worker. “It’s the storm.” She says. “The storm made him go weird and attack me, and it made me hear people’s thoughts. It made Ferre see the future. Now it’s made Joly bring people back to life.”

Grantaire frowned. “That’s not fair. Where’s my power, then?”

“Maybe you don’t have one,” Joly interjects in a shaky, tense tone. “Maybe you’re so annoying that even the lightning didn’t want to deal with your shit.”

“Can we please just stay calm?” Enjolras says.

“We have to get rid of the body, and all traces of blood and stuff in here.” Cosette says.

“We have to call the police!”

“Oh, and say what, exactly?” Grantaire is oscillating between weirdly calm and freaking out. “That we got hit by lightning and got fucking magic powers?!”

“Obviously not.” Cosette says. “We can’t call the police. No one will believe us if we tell them. No one at all.”

“Fuck,” Enjolras breathes, and runs her hands through her hair. Somehow she’s managed to get blood across her cheekbone.

“We have to bury him,” Joly says. “Clean up the blood, and bury him, and no one will find out.”

Enjolras looks around at the five of them, Grantaire chewing her nails, Cosette still a little in shock, Joly blinking rapidly at his hands and Feuilly with his shoulders tense like any sudden move would snap him. Combeferre is examining the worker’s body, frowning. “We have to know, there’s no going back from this.” She says. “If we do this, we can’t ever tell anyone. We have to protect each other.”

Combeferre is the first to nod in agreement, words dying in his throat.

Grantaire nods second, short and jerky. She reaches down to dig the locker room keys out of his pocket.

Joly and Cosette both agree, and Enjolras turns to Feuilly. “Feuilly?”

“Ok,” he says, quietly. “Ok.”


End file.
